This Is The Life
I remember watching an old television show about modern conveniences and how all of these new inventions, the dishwasher, laundry machine, vacuum cleaner and space age products were going to make the 21stcentury a life of leisure. These things would free up our time so much that we could just lounge around in a stress free environment. I don’t know about you, but this somehow doesn’t seem to accurately describe my present time world. We may not have to work as hard physically as the older generations, but our purported leisure time has turned into a hectic lifestyle. Our lives are comprised of alternating hurry, hurry, hurries and impatient waits. We leave work, run here, run there, grab a quick bite and do something else until late at night. What used to be a world where the father worked during the day and came home in the afternoon while the wife tended the kids and kept up the house, has turned into a world where more often than not both husband and wife work and sometimes one works two jobs to keep up with the bills.
This rapid paced, long day lifestyle has placed an unusual type of stress on our bodies. Spending a large part of our day in frantic mode, (often magnified by stressful worries) directly affects how well our bodies heal. The body has two basic modes of operation, healing/digestion mode and running /fighting mode. The body is rigged so that when running and fighting mode kicks in, healing and digestion shuts down. It is designed this way to conserve the resources of the body and ensure that maximum energy is used when running or fighting. By living our life in a hectic lifestyle we are keeping this running and fighting mode constantly “keyed-in” affecting the body’s ability to heal in greater or lesser degrees. Constantly keeping the body prepared to run or fight, then never exerting our bodies is hard on our systems. Our adrenal and other glands end up very much over worked. In the previous century people had stress, perhaps not the same type, but the average person also had much more physical exertion throughout the day to accompany this stress. They also wound down at the end of the day and slept not long after the sun went down.
Along with this, healing and digestion are additionally interfered with by not including the family ritual of regularly sitting down at the table for a relaxing meal. We need to allow time for our bodies to wind down in order for the healing and digestion mode to become operative. Lack of these slow periods may mean that even when we put good food in our bodies it may not be broken down and absorbed as effectively as when we had “proper” dinners.
Our exercise level in general is much less on average than it used to be. I’m sure that cars have something to do with this. People used to walk to places that they wanted to go. Now we fight to have a parking space that is 30 feet closer. With the rise of factories there also arose more sedentary or repetitive jobs. The ideal place for a body is out in nature walking or running for the better part of the day, not stuck inside a building doing the same tedious task for 8 or more hours. Many, many studies have been done that show the importance of exercise — as if we needed them. Any person with common sense knows that people who exercise are in better shape.
Somehow our 21st century life of leisure ended up as not so much leisure. Instead what has developed is an unnatural environment with unnatural type stresses and unnatural type activities. When stresses become more than resistances problems develop. Unfortunately the chances of returning to the lifestyle of the “olden days” are pretty slim for most of us. What we can do is help our body to become stronger in order to cope with the unnatural stresses that are routinely placed upon it. One of the best means that we have for becoming stronger and building the resistance of our bodies is with the raw building materials that we put in it, our food. Eating only top notch organic home made foods is what is required. Since this, once again is difficult to do with our lifestyle, concentrated whole food supplements are often necessary to give the body what it needs to compensate for our less than ideal environment and lifestyle.
